


No Thank You

by HuggerMuggered



Series: iwatchedyoufall's Hybrid AU Stuff [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: RT Hybrid AU X
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-23
Updated: 2014-02-23
Packaged: 2018-01-13 13:10:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1227607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HuggerMuggered/pseuds/HuggerMuggered
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a strange virus takes hold of the world, turning people into animal hybrids, Roosterteeth is affected like anyone else. Ray Narvaez Jr. is next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Thank You

It had been on the news, every channel, for two weeks- but Ray had only heard about because people at the office were talking about it. That was what his life was like, anyway; if he hadn’t been grabbing another redbull from the refrigerator and overheard JJ and Blaine he might never have heard the news. He tended to be an inside; no social contact sort of person, and he was taking a break from twitter.

But apparently _something_ was going around, the government was telling people not to panic, and now RoosterTeeth was getting more requests for vacation days than had ever been received before.

At least now he knew why the Achievement Hunter office was half empty- and why no one was answering his calls.

Ray shot back into the office and dropped the can on his desk, staring at his workstation like it had the answers for him. Next to him, Michael continued working like nothing was amiss- rushing. Apparently Lindsay wasn’t feeling well; they’d be going home early. He had his headphones on one ear, the other uncovered just in case.

“Michael.” Ray said, settling down in his chair. “Did you hear about the-”

“Yes.” Michael answered, turning to raise an eyebrow at Ray’s rising shoulders. “Dude, we talked about this thing for three hours yesterday.”

“I was editing GTA.” Ray used as his excuse, sitting down in his chair.

“You’re absolutely useless.” Michael scoffed, clicking his screen while still glaring out of the corner of his eyes at Ray. He seemed to note Ray tapping his fingers on his keyboard. “You freaking out?”

“No, I’m not freaking out.” Ray said, feeling something akin to panic rise in his chest as he did so. “Why would I freak out? Just some weird virus-apocalypse scenario shit turning people into their spirit animals-”

“ _That’s_ Racist.” Michael said, turning back to his work.

“Turning people into _regular non native american animals_.” Ray said, correcting himself. Shit to everyone who wanted him to watch his mouth, he didn’t have time for this. “You’re not freaking out?”

Michael looked pensive for about three seconds, then he shrugged his shoulders and clicked on another tab to move a frame three seconds ahead in the rage quit video he was working on.

“How are you not freaking out?” Ray asked, throwing his hands up into the air.

“Someone has to stay calm.” Michael muttered, finally giving up on the video and closing out his tasks, slowly shutting everything down. “Freaking out isn’t going to stop it- and no one’s dead.”

“There are _three_ people dead.” Ray corrected, having heard Blaine discussing it with JJ in the kitchen.

“There are three people dead in Georgia because some assholes shot first and asked questions later- they’re not dead because they turned into animals.” Michael replied, hitting the power buttons on his computer and consoles. “And yes, Florida is threatening to hunt down anyone who’s growing scales and Alabama hasn’t talked to anyone in a week- but we’re good here.”

“Now you’re just being grumpy.” Ray said, hearing the teasing behind Michael’s jokes about the southern states. Hopefully Texas wouldn’t go too far like Florida was- demanding a catalog of all species as they appeared. Hopefully it wouldn’t cut ties like Alabama until the whole thing was over and done with.

“I’m taking Lindsay home.” Michael said, like it was an answer. His wife had been sniffling all day, complaining about a ringing in her ears. “And I’m thinking we're not going to be back for a few days.”

Michael’s tone was still conversational, but there was a meaning behind the words. Everyone was saying the change took time and energy- people were calling out of work for whole weeks at a time, Gavin and Geoff had been missing four days already, not including the weekend. Jack had been gone since monday afternoon.

Ray worked the back of his jaw against his teeth, still sitting on the edge of his chair. He might be an asshole, but Michael was his friend. If it was going to be Lindsay next, he was going to be as positive as he could.

“Good luck dude.”

“Yeah.” Michael said, grabbing his backpack and heading for the door. “You too.”

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next day Ray finds the offices even more empty- he’s the only one in Achievement Hunter and there’s no one but Gus across the hall. The back room has people milling around, some animators and JJ and the like, but else-wise it’s empty. He gets to work in an effort to ignore how off everything feels, tapping his foot against his desk since there’s no one around for the habit to bother.

When the headache starts in around ten-thirty, Ray ignores it.

It’s stupid, but it’s not messing with his editing and someone needs to keep the videos rolling. They’ve got backups and backups for their backups, but it doesn’t hurt to try and stay on schedule. He clicks, and moves, and sighs.

When his head reaches migraine proportions by eleven, he jumps out of his chair and stretches and tries to figure out who’s the most likely to have Advil lying around. He remembers Ryan complaining about his head the day before, so he heads off to the back.

It’s even creepier back here, where there’s nothing but empty desks and quiet clicking from the four or five people left to work. It’s apocalypse level-crazy. Ray doesn’t like it.

Seeing Lindsay’s empty chair next to Ryan just reminds him that they’re all doomed, and that he should probably call Michael and see how they’re both doing. Would that be rude? It’s nice, right, trying to check up on people?

Should he have called Gavin, too?

Ryan’s head is on the desk in front of him, braced on his arms. He’s got his eyes tight shut and his fingers clenched. He looks like shit- and Ray has no idea why he even bothered coming in to work.

Then again, Ray barely knows why he bothered himself to come in.

“Ryan, d’you have any more advil?” He asks, figuring he might as well get to the point. The gent does not look like he’s in the mood for small talk.

Ray’s correct- because Ryan blearily shoves a half-empty bottle of painkillers off of a pile of merch at the corner of his desk which Ray lunges to catch. Ryan never once uncovers his eyes or lifts his head.

But yeah, there’s no reason to be freaked out, apparently.

“Ryan go home.” He hears himself say, popping open the bottle and dropping three of the pills into his hand. “You’re done, man.”

As Ray puts the bottle of Advil back onto its merch perch he hears Ryan mumble something that sounds decidedly like ‘ _Can’t drive_ -’ and ‘ _wife’s on her way_ ’. It’s enough of an answer, so Ray nods even though Ryan can’t see it and then turns back towards the exit- taking his time as he pops the advil into his mouth and thinks about the next five hours he’ll be editing videos for. Wonderful.

At least the headache won’t be a problem for long.

By the time he reaches his desk he can feel the pills settling in his stomach and working their medicine-ways, pulling away the pounding behind his eyes and letting him focus on his computer screen instead of the dull ache. He starts tapping his foot again, wanting to move.

Maybe he’ll skip lunch and go home early.

That sounds like a plan.

Ray puts his headphones back onto his ears and starts cutting footage together, watching Jack gleefully crash his car into Geoff’s, smashing Gavin’s avatar between them. There’s loud laughter in his ears, too loud- He pushes the volume down some so that it wont kill the fans when they finally get a chance to see it too.

It leaves a ringing in his ears, which he ignores.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ray wakes up Friday morning with every intention of throwing on clothes and walking to work.

Those plans change immediately upon sitting up and finding that the ringing in his ears has doubled along with the pounding in his head. No amount of Advil is going to help with this mess- he blearily sends a text to someone he thinks is at the office as a sick note and then lays back down and sleeps.

His dreams are awful and complicated and he doesn’t try to remember them.

It was seven in the morning when he woke up the first time- It must be three in the afternoon by the time someone sets his phone to ringing with text messages. It wakes him up and set his head off again, sparks behind his eyes. He can’t see the phone screen through the haze that his dependant eyesight produces, but it’s just a text message anyway.

Ray stuffs his phone into the drawer at the side of his bed and groans, rolling over to try and find somewhere comfortable to lay his head. He kicks off the blankets, pulls them back up, and then does it again for lack of anything better to do. He tries laying backwards on the bed, sideways, anywhere that puts his head at the right level of comfort.

Somewhere around the point in time he kicks the headboard hard enough to shake the bed, he falls back into unconsciousness.

Sometime later, hours maybe a day, he’s pretty sure it’s Tina calling him on his phone. It’s her ringtone- mario themesong in dubstep, and he reaches for the drawer he’s shoved the phone into because this time he should at least try not to ignore the people who are taking their time to check on him.

He feels like shit, and it shows when he presses the answer button and just groans into the phone.

“Oh shit, you too?” The voice on the other end says.

Ray doesn’t have an answer for that. In the back of his head he knows what’s happening, news stories and Michael and three people dead rolling around in basement of his mind- but at the forefront he feels like a bag of dicks being thrown at a wall.

He gives Tina a useless sort of snuffle in response, and hears her shaky laugh.

“Yeah, okay then. Just make sure you drink some water- eat something. Stop feeling like shit.”

Another groan.

“You want me to come over and check on you?”

Ray freezes, hands wrapped up in his bedsheets. He shakes his head, realizes he’s on the phone, and then says very quietly. “No, I’m good. I’ll be fine.”

He has no idea what he looks like right now- hell, he could be half a mongoose or something. Thats enough to make him want his friends as far away as possible- He’s suddenly glad he didn’t call Michael or Gavin, no one wants to deal with anyone else, going through this.

He’s not very convincing, but Tina is good people. She knows when friends don’t want friends to see them.

“Man you’re going to laugh your ass off when you see the internet after you’re done. Go back to sleep, Ray. Drink some water.” She says, and then she’s the one hanging up. Ray’s grateful- he doesn’t want to have to find the phone again.

Water is probably a good idea, but he’d rather sleep.

\---------------------------------------------------------------------------

It takes three days, so it’s Monday morning when Ray cracks open his eyes and breaths and notes that his head no longer aches just for existing. He breathes in air into his dry throat- coughs, and rolls over onto his stomach.

He lands on his phone and grabs at it, reaching for his glasses on the bedside table. He shoves them onto his face and gets ready to look through the messages he’s been left, but the frames of his glasses slip off of his face and onto the blanket in front of him.

Ray tries again, still half asleep- but only succeeds in sending the glasses to the blanket again, slipping right down his nose and onto the mattress.

He groans, lifting himself up to sit with his legs folded- carding his hand through his messy hair. There’s something stuck in it, so he tugs-

It sends a sharp pain through his scalp, and he gasps, leaning forward.

The pain wakes Ray up, makes him remember- He drops his phone and puts his other hand to his head as well, feeling- He rubs down the sides of his face and panics. His ears are gone...

But oh, oh no no no-

Ray grabs his glasses and shoves himself off the bed, hopping on one leg and stumbling to untangle himself from the sheets. He hits the bathroom tile and nearly slips, catching himself on the sink counter and cramming his now-useless glasses onto his face, holding them in place and just _looking_.

He blinks at the thing that stares at him in the mirror, and then in true Ray fashion pulls his glasses off so that he doesn’t have to look at the perky, black, fuzzy things coming off the top of his head, twitching every time he feels his heart beat.

“Jesus fucking Christ-” He says, lowering himself towards the floor. “I cannot be a fucking- this is a piece of shit...”

He hears his phone buzzing, no text message tone now that it’s nearly dead from its weekend away from it’s charger. He has no energy to go and get it, he sits himself down on the bathroom tile and tries to breath.

He sits on something, and shoves his hand behind him to try and remove the loofah or whatever else peice of shit he’s sat on top of but tugs and finds that tender new-appendage feeling again and groans, absolutely done with his life.

“There’s a tail.” He whispers to himself, absolutely going mad. “There’s a fucking tail on my ass.”

and it’s _fluffy_.

Somewhere in between thinking about all the horrible jokes and awful days and how the fuck he’s going to get his glasses to stay on his face, Ray decides to stand up and throw his phone onto its charger with the volume and the vibrations off. He leaves it there and walks around his apartment, gathering rubberbands and duct tape and creating a monstrosity on the frames of his glasses so that he can stop using his hands to hold them in place.

He downs three water bottles and sits at his kitchen counter on a stool and taps his foot like crazy against the base of the chair, just trying to make sense of the world.

After an hour of sulking, he decides to face the music.

He grabs his phone and sits on his bed, going through text messages. There’s a few from Tina before she decided to call- one from Jack and three from Gavin. The latter seems the most coherent, even though there’s a foreboding picture of Gavin’s bed covered in feathers attached to one of the messages.

He switches to twitter- and oh God Tina was so right.

Ray laughs at the grimacing picture of Gavin, perched high up on Griffon’s work bench with wings thrown out behind him; and he chuckles at the image of Geoff with a hand tucked around horns. He laughs hardest at Lindsay’s latest tweet- a six second Vine of a seething Michael with a long tail flicking behind him, until he turns the camera onto her- showing off red fuzzy ears and tail. It’s almost too much to handle- like everyone’s in costume and showing off.

He jumps off his bed and bounds into the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror. He’s done selfies before, but never like this.

Ray doesn’t care that his hair is a wreck or that he’s sporting a three-days sick tank top; but all of his grumpiness comes back when he looks at the ears sitting on top of his head, mused like his hair and twitching.

He snaps the picture anyway, because he’s that kind of person.

And the tweet says it all.

****

[ Click here for image](http://padalickingood.tumblr.com/post/77550082353/finally-got-to-do-a-re-draw-of-one-my-favourite)


End file.
